XML syntax (was: Common Lisp "let")

[Neel Krishnaswami <address@hidden>]

Nathan Carl Summers writes:
> On 3 Jun 2002, Bruce Lewis wrote:
> >
> > People using XML often instinctively switch to a less painful
> > syntax for structuring data.  The same doesn't happen when using
> > s-exprs.
>
> Perhaps people should take that as a not-so-subtle hint that XML
> isn't the right tool for that job.

It's not just yet, but XML has been quickly evolving into the right
tool. Nowadays, the various XML schema languages let you specify
interesting type constraints, and rolling your own typechecker isn't
in the "standard hacker bag of tricks" like rolling your own parser
is. To be sure I'd prefer if XML were sexp-ML instead, but it's
foolish to ignore capabilities that are already there.

-- 
Neel Krishnaswami
neelk@alum.mit.edu